Jan 22
Culture Hack Day: Filmflexicon
Culture Hack Day ( http://culturehackday.org.uk ) was a weekend where people from the cultural industries with data to mash got together with software developers who wanted some data to mash into useful things. I did a few hacks - this is one that's actually quite useful.Filmflexicon - it's a mobile web application that helps you choose what to watch on Virgin Media's on-demand movie service Filmflex.
The great thing about Filmflex is that they have some great films on there. The bad thing is that the on-screen interface is slow to use, is structure in a way that doesn't help the user, and you have to choose each film to get a rough synopsis, which is repetitive and annoying. I usually sit there choosing a film and compare what's on offer with online ratings services like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
So, Filmflexicon scrapes the listings from the Virgin Media website and then combines the films on offer with the ratings and reviews that Rotten Tomatoes has given each of them. It colorizes the results so you can see at a glance what's a good film and what isn't (I'll leave the definition of 'good' out of this...) and if you want to, you can view the full Rotten Tomatoes review for each one.
It's already saved me some time and I've found a couple of films I would otherwise have missed.
Try it out yourself on iPhone, Android and (probably) modern Blackberry, as well as just with a normal web browser. On iPhone you can save the app to your home screen using the Bookmark button and choose "Add to Home Screen".
